On Coffee and Universal Theories
by Nyala Necheyev
Summary: Angel, Wesley and Cordelia are whisked away to an alternate reality where everything has changed. Slight Stargate/Angel crossover
1. Chapter 1

**Part One - Decaf Vandalism**

Somewhere, in a cozy small business office situated snugly inside the old Hyperion Hotel, a man and a young woman argued, bickering most professionally as they waited for their employer to wake up and put them back to work.

"Wesley, it was your turn to buy the coffee!" Cordelia Chase snapped furiously, brown eyes bright and snappy with imminent frustration, "Instead, you choose to spend most of the night with a dusty old tome, and then, even when you do decide to go out and get coffee at the last minute, you picked up a blend that I know for a fact Angel won't like!"

"Since when did a vampire have a favorite coffee blend!?" Wesley protested. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was a young English man who had worked among the supernatural as a Watcher until the Council sacked him because of his "incompetence".

"Since that vampire spent the whole damn night prowling the streets of L.A. doing his job and then spent half of the day sleeping it off!" Cordelia shot back violently, tossing her long brown hair for emphasis. She was a real California beauty: slim, trim, tanned, with thick, wavy, long hair and hypnotic, dark brown eyes.

"And besides," she continued shortly, "I don't even like the coffee."

Wesley looked insulted.

"Well, at least I tried," he defended himself. While the man looked a bit bookish, Wesley wasn't a half-bad looking character, if you liked your men skinny, klutzy, and near-sighted. One of Cordelia's friends had once described him as "cute", until, when showing off, Wesley had thunked his brand new battle ax into the wall of the office on accident, leaving a hole the size of a golf ball that still had yet to be repaired.

Cordelia made a spiteful noise and rolled her eyes in disdain.

"Are you sure Angel is going to be as understanding as I am?" she challenged.

"Understanding!?" Wesley parroted incredulously, "Oh, there's a laugh! You're practically ripping me to pieces!"

"Exactly my point," Cordelia replied smartly, unphased by Wesley's outburst, "If I were Angel after tasting that sludge, I'd go all vampy and really rip you to pieces."

"Who am I ripping to pieces?" asked a quiet, calm voice from the direct vicinity of the old-fashioned elevator that led up from Angel's historical relic-ridden apartment up to the office where most of what went on in Angel Investigations, the private investigating business at which all three of them worked, took place, startling both Wesley and Cordelia. The humans muttered, "Good morning," as Angel "Jones", formerly known as the ruthless vampire Angelus, pushed aside the collapsible gate and stepped out into the office, replying, "Hey guys. Coffee made yet?"

Cordelia nodded carefully, and Wesley watched nervously as Angel smiled and quickly made his way to the almost completely full pot of coffee on a small, wooden corner table. As the vampire sniffed the air curiously, he grimaced, causing the poor ex-Watcher to eye the window-shaded outside door longingly, clearly calculating how long he could outrun an outraged and coffee-fueled vampire. Despite the gypsy curse that had long ago endowed the vampire with a soul, Angel was known to have had his occasional "off" moments, one of which Wesley had experienced first-hand and did not intend to revisit. However, Cordelia felt confident in the knowledge that true happiness was the only way to break the spell, and ingesting bad coffee was, in her opinion, the farthest one could get from that little spell-breaker.

Angel poured himself a cup of coffee and quaffed the contents of the white styrofoam cup without hesitation. Wesley had just began to relax, thinking that Angel wouldn't mind his mistake at all, when –

Hack! Cough! Spit!

Wesley looked absolutely terrified as Angel choked on his favorite morning beverage. Cordelia, eyes wide with sudden alarm, ducked behind the computer behind which she slumped into a comfortable black swivel chair.

"Yelch!" the vampire grimaced, leaning on the coffee table and setting down the cup as a wave of nausea struck him in the gut after just one sip of the stuff, "What the hell is this gunk? Blekh!"

"Um..." Wesley replied after a slight hesitation, "Coffee?"

"Oh, no," Angel denied, holding the cup out at arms length as though it were some new kind of poisonous demon blood that would blow up in your face while masquerading as a cup of the most offensive coffee in existence, "This...is not coffee. This is a perversion of a clone of a copy of an excuse for the elixir of life most commonly known as coffee!"

Wesley winced under every epithet.

"Yup," Cordelia remarked dryly, "Leave it to Wesley to go out for coffee and come back with some kind of highly radioactive volatile material in a tin can labeled clearly on the very front with the mysterious words, 'naturally decaffeinated'."

"Hey!" Wesley protested, "It's not like it had a big name tag that said, 'Hello, my name is disgusting excuse for coffee that will drive any vampire up the wall, to Hell, and beyond'! At least I tried! Last time Cordelia didn't even – "

"Excuse me if I sound a little behind the times," Angel spoke up with a suspicious glance at Wesley and Cordelia, sarcastically pensive, "But how do you 'naturally decaffeinate' a coffee bean?"

"Oh, wow," Cordelia said with a smirk, "That would call in for some major genetic tampering of the coffee plant. We must look into this."

"Ah, yes," said Angel with a rare, boyish grin across his pale face, "Those poor coffee plants! Hey, which reminds me – "

Suddenly Cordelia cried out and fell out of the chair behind the computer. Angel's dark eyes immediately followed her descent and he lunged forward to catch her before she hit the floor. Cordelia was having a vision – her body's jerky movements and her cry of pain was enough to tell that to Angel. Wesley watched with growing concern until finally Cordelia snapped out of it and looked up at Angel.

"Cordelia," he asked, "What did you see?"

"I ..." Cordelia tried to convince herself that she had not just seen the man she thought she'd seen. It didn't make sense. He was dead...wasn't he?

"I'm not sure I know," she answered finally, "It doesn't make sense..."

"What's that?" Wesley asked suddenly.

Angel and Cordelia stood up and looked out the window of the office to see a blinding light coming toward the door. Angel had to look away; his eyes weren't used to that much light. Wesley was already to get a bad feeling about the whole thing when Cordelia cried out, "That's what I saw in my vision! That and...and...I think it was D – "

Suddenly everything went completely blank, like an empty slate. There was no light or darkness. Just nothingness, that went on and on and on and on and on and on without end....

Then –


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two - Brand New...Come Again?**

Reveille Eugenea Kepler slammed the door behind her, startling her boyfriend into wakefulness at 6:30 AM. Bobbed red hair tussled and pale blue eyes flashing furiously, she stormed into the kitchen and threw her purse onto the small kitchen table with the musical yet tormented jingle of thrown car keys. Then she yelled, "Stupid son of a b***h!" and strode into the small living room, coming to a stop before her boyfriend, who still sat on the tan leather sofa, the only one they had, Reveille's hands on her hips, glaring at him at first, then softening as he asked with a smooth Irish accent, "Bad day at the base?"

Reveille, who most often went by the harmless nickname of Rivvy, sighed and hung her head exhaustedly, though her hands stayed on her hips.

"You're telling me," she drawled, clearly from somewhere near the West Texas area. Looking back up at her boyfriend curiously, she asked, "What are you doing on the sofa, Allen?"

"I fell asleep waiting for you," Allen replied. His hair was short and dark, and his features were smooth and simple, though he looked like he could hold his own in a fight. Of course, Reveille fought him every day herself to keep honing her martial arts skills, and knew full well that he could.

"You stayed up all night?" Rivvy asked incredulously. She had pulled an unexplained leave of absence last night on base doing a psychological profile on a man named Tomin, the husband of one of the base residents. Being the best criminal psychologist on base, she had been the general's first choice.

"Yeah," Allen replied, then under Reveille's skeptical gaze, admitted, "Well, yeah, obviously not all night. What took you so long anyway?"

Reveille shrugged vaguely, as though it didn't matter. "Special stuff. Lots of red tape got gummed up over time and I had to fix it."

"Ah." Although Allen knew that Rivvy was a lieutenant in the US Air Force, and worked in Cheyenne Mountain base just outside Colorado Springs, he also knew that Reveille worked with some pretty deep, Area 51-type stuff that she kept trying to hide from him.

After a moment of awkward silence, Reveille gave a sigh and with a muttered, "Oh, what the hell," she plunked down beside Allen on the sofa.

"Tired, are we?" Allen asked with a smile as the young woman closed her beautiful pale eyes and laid her head on his shoulder. Unlike the olive green jeans, jacket, and steel-toed hiking boots that his girlfriend wore, Allen's attire consisted of a plain gray sweatshirt and jeans.

"Oh, yeah..." Rivvy murmured with a provocative smile, "And they gave me the whole day off. And you know what?"

"What?"

Rivvy leaned back her head to look her boyfriend in the face with a playful grin that Allen had come to know and love.

"It's your turn to make the coffee, hon."

Allen gave a theatrical groan. "Do I have to?"

Slapping Allen's shoulder playfully, Rivvy reproved with a tiny laugh, "Don't you dare try and get out of it like last time."

"Awww, come on..." Allen continued to protest until Rivvy gave him a firm, loving kiss and said, "Make the coffee...please?"

Allen laughed and stood up as Rivvy hurried to sit up so as not to fall down.

"Okay, I guess --"

Whatever Allen was going to say, it was interrupted by a sudden flare of bright white luminescence and a startled, "GEEZus!" from Rivvy. As the light faded away, the limp form of a young woman took shape. Reveille stepped forward warily, holding back her boyfriend with a muttered, "You're a civilian", and checked the stranger's pulse.

"She's alive," the lieutenant told him, "But just barely. Come on, help me get her on the sofa."

Quickly understanding the urgency of Rivvy's request, Allen didn't bother to argue, taking the woman's feet while Rivvy took the torso and together they soon had the tanned brunette laid down on the sofa. Checking by hanging a loose thread from her jacket over the girl's nose, Rivvy said, "Damn, she's stopped breathing!"

straddling the mysterious woman, Rivvy began to preform Circulatory Pulmonary Resuscitation, driving both crossed fists into the girl's rib cage for fifteen counts, then blew into her lungs and started all over again.

After three tries without success, the woman suddenly gave a small gasp and began breathing on her own as her brown eyes flew open to see Rivvy and Allen.

"Allen," Rivvy reminded him softly, "Coffee."

"Oh, yeah, right!" Allen agreed, then hesitated before going into the kitchen to do just that, "Sure I shouldn't hang around for a while?"

"Allen," Rivvy said again, "This girl needs coffee! The caffeine will help clear her head and keep her heart beating!"

"Oh!" Allen said, suddenly understanding, "Right. Be right with you." And with that, the man hurried into the kitchen to start the coffee going. The young woman stared after him in disbelief, as though he were an impossible factor in the grand scheme of the universe.

"Doyle...?"

Rivvy got up off of the girl and stared at her in shock. "You know Allen?"

"I...yeah!" the girl started to sit up, but at a sudden dizzy spell fell back onto the sofa cushion that substituted for a pillow, "And who are you?" she asked Rivvy.

"I'm Reveille Kepler, Rivvy," the other woman replied, "And how do you know my boyfriend?"

"I worked with him!" the woman replied, trying to sit up and this time succeeding, "I'm Cordelia Chase, and this has got to be some kind of nightmare! What about the others? Where's Angel and Wesley?"

"Huh?"

Just then, Allen came in with a cheerful smile. "Coffee'll be done in just a minute," he reported to Rivvy, playfully saluting the young Texan, "Sir!"

"Carry on, soldier," Rivvy replied with a barely concealable, crooked smirk that had caught Allen's eye three months ago. Then Allen turned to Cordelia.

"And how are you feeling?"

"Confused," Cordelia answered, "I don't get this."

Allen looked in confusion from Cordelia to Rivvy then back to Cordelia. "Get what?"

"How you can be here!" Cordelia replied in frustration, "I saw it happen, I saw...it happen..." she trailed off as she looked up at the couple whose apartment she'd just beamed into, or something like that. "This can't be happening."

"All the world's a stage," Rivvy quoted gothically, steepling her two first fingers and interlacing the others with a meditative expression, "And all the people merely bad actors and actresses."

Allen groaned in disgust at Rivvy's new quote. It was even worse than the last twisted colloquialism: Quoth the Hippie, 'Never War'. Cordelia looked horrified. Little did Reveille know, however, that Allen Doyle kept a list in a special, top secret notebook that chronicled all of these nightmarish sayings. No doubt Rivvy would kill the demon hybrid if she did know or ever found out.

"Could you guys please explain to me what's going on?" Cordelia asked. Rivvy gave a melodramatic, sagely sigh and turned to face Cordelia with a solemn expression.

"This," she gestured to Allen, "Is my boyfriend. That is to say, he is someone I really really really like and – "

"That's not funny!" Cordelia protested angrily.

"Okay," Rivvy agreed gamely, "I'm an Air Force officer, he's my boyfriend, you're in Colorado Springs, Colorado, you just appeared in our living room, and --"

"And you need this," Allen said, handing Cordelia a fresh cup of steaming hot coffee. Rivvy sniffed the air and gave a complete sigh of contentment.

"Oh, god, Allen, that smells sooo good!" she said longingly, "Is my Trek cup on the table yet?"

"All set up," Allen confirmed, "Along with a mother load of powdered creamer and two spoonfuls of sugar, just the way you like it."

If there was one thing Rivvy loved about her boyfriend, it was his 'just add coffee' mixtures that he often set up for Rivvy to try. The JAC routine, as the two called it, had come into standard procedure when Rivvy started working from sun-up till sun-down at Cheyenne Mountain, and hadn't enough time to fix the thing up herself. Every time she was planning on being gone for a while, Allen would slip some instant-coffee JACs into his girlfriend's back pack, knowing how she got without her coffee on hand each and every morning. Just add hot water, or as Rivvy called them, Travel CoRDs, Coffee Ready to Drink. Even the other soldiers at Rivvy's workplace had come to enjoy them to point of stealing them out of the lieutenant's locker when given the chance, especially a certain anthropologist who was just as coffee-fueled as Rivvy was.

"Oh, good!" Rivvy beamed and ran into the kitchen to get her coffee. Cordelia and Allen sat there awkwardly for a while, until Rivvy came skittering back in with her stocking feet with a cup on which was emblazoned the universal symbol of Star Trek – an arrowhead with two straight horizontal ribbons behind it.

"I kicked off my shoes," She admitted, "I'm home. I shouldn't need them." Then she paused and looked at the two people on the sofa. "Do y'all, like, need to catch up or something? 'Cause I can take a rain check and just drink my coffee in the kitchen."

"Catch up?" Allen echoed in confusion.

"Well," Rivvy replied, "She says y'all worked together..."

"No we didn't," Allen replied.

"Yes we did," Cordelia corrected him, "And you don't know her," she gestured toward Rivvy.

"I dare say he does," Rivvy said indignantly, "Hell, he knows me better than most folks do. That's why Allen has earned the prestigious title of 'boyfriend'."

"Yeah, well, I thought everybody called Doyle 'Francis' when he'd reached that level."

Suddenly a very strange thing happened. Rivvy began to snicker, and Allen turned away, obviously unwilling to go through that torment again as his girlfriend sad in a low, drawling male voice, "Here we go again..."

"I don't get it," Cordelia told them, feeling a bit slighted at their cryptic humor.

"Oh, you wouldn't, honey," Rivvy replied with a maternal, seen-it-all type of smirk, "You're too California."

"What's that supposed to mean!?" Cordelia snapped, sitting up straight as a pole with an insulted look in her eyes.

"It means," Allen replied, a bit less smugly than Reveille, "That, in Rivvy's off-beat sort of way, that you probably haven't seen the movie she's referring to."

"Yup," Rivvy confirmed, sitting on the futon that met the sofa at the base of a very neat right angle. She took a sip from her "Trek mug", and, savoring it with a small sigh of contentment, slumped deeper into the blankets and sofa cushions, closing her eyes with loving bliss.

"And what movie would that be?" Cordelia asked, peaked as one could be.

Allen grimaced and allowed Rivvy to say, with as much dramatic luster as she could, "'Francis: The Talking Mule'. Best movie there is. Watched it as a kid and bought it the second I got my own house and TV."

Cordelia's eyebrows shot up in short surprise, then slowly a giggle leaked out, and then she started giggling helplessly. The movie itself sounded like it was a blast. A talking mule? She so had to see that one!

"So," Rivvy continued, "We did some psychoanalyzing, figured out that Allen just didn't like the shortened form, 'Al', and so I promised to just call him Allen. And that," She said, with an air of calm finis, "As they say, is that."

Cordelia slowly stopped giggling and tried the coffee that Allen had handed her. It really was good.

"Wow," she said, taking another sip of the beverage, "This stuff really is good, Doyle...I mean..." She trailed off, her face becoming downcast as Allen did a double-take, still uneasy at the fact that she knew his name.

Rivvy also bristled a bit, until Allen said, "How exactly do you know me, again?"

"We, uh..." Cordelia said carefully, trying to keep her voice form breaking up. She still felt horrible about the day Doyle had died. "We worked together. For Angel."

"And who's Angel?" Allen asked.

"He's, uh..." Cordelia wondered how much she could trust this other Doyle, "He's a private investigator. We were his, uh, sort of...helpers, I guess."

"Angel who?"

"Uh, Jones?" Cordelia suggested, "Angel Jones."

Reveille Kepler leaned forward curiously. "Go on. Tell us about this job of Allen's."

"Well," Cordelia continued, growing a bit more wary as she went on about it, "Doyle, uh, he was sort of our source to the lower areas of Los Angeles. He was sort of the middle man between here and there."

"And...?" Rivvy prompted.

"And what?"

"And, how did Allen get out of the job?"

This was the part Cordelia had been dreading. She was almost sure she'd be see-through when she answered, "Um, Doyle decided to, uh, try his luck...elsewhere."

"Allen," Rivvy said, "Did you work for a private investigator?"

"Never in my life, Riv," Allen replied, very confused, "I don't know where she's getting all this."

"Hmm," Reveille murmured thoughtfully, then turned to Cordelia. "Well?"

"Well what?" Cordelia asked nervously.

"Where are you getting all this?" Rivvy extrapolated.

"Look," Cordelia said finally, "There's something else to it."

"Do tell," Rivvy advised, and Allen looked interested as well.

"Well," Cordelia told them, "After Doyle, uh, left, Wesley showed up. He's sort of a ninja-teacher-cult-show sort of thing. Anyway, he, me and Angel were all in the office talking when this big light came down the hallway and into the office and sucked us all into oblivion. And then after all that mess I woke up here," Cordelia pointed at the floor of the small apartment indicatively.

"Hmm," Rivvy said again, "Maybe...You say that you were in our work office when this thing came along. Was there anything there that was...out of the ordinary?"

"Um, aside from Wesley's half-a** coffee?" Cordelia asked dryly, "No."

"Okay..." Rivvy thought for a moment then asked again, "Can you describe this thing to me, this anomaly?"

"Um, yeah," Cordelia replied, "It kind of looked like a tentacled light-based spot. A pretty big spot too."

"And did it seem sentient?"

Allen looked very confused, but couldn't say anything before Cordelia spurted out, "What the hell are you, a lawyer or something?!"

"Nope," Rivvy replied, unphased, "Actually I'm an astrophysicist. Theoretical astrophysicist."

"What's theoretical astra...whatever?" Cordelia asked in confusion.

"It's astrophysics combined with all the theories and stuff that come with," Rivvy explained, "Theoretical astrophysicists have to get our heads around the stuff that practical astrophysics doesn't."

"Oh," Cordelia said, replying quietly. She was having a tough enough time trying to get her head around Doyle's being alive and in Colorado springs without trying to comprehend the mysteries of the universe on top of that.

Help, she thought, I need an excedrin.

"And I think," Rivvy continued sagely, "What happened to you was a case of alternate temporal shifts, probably something of an alternate universe, though not so much alternate as being just a little bit different. You see?"

"No," Cordelia replied bluntly, "I don't see."

Rivvy gave a sigh and tried again. "It's like a … a sink full of dishwater. All the bubbles are separate, right?"

"Yeah..." Cordelia nodded slowly.

"Okay," the scientist continued, "Imagine that in each of these bubbles is a universe very much like your own, but with certain tiny changes. Got me so far?"

"Yeah, sort of …" Cordelia replied, "I think."

"Okay," Rivvy went on, "So, two of these bubbles collide. What happens?"

"They pop?"

"No!" Rivvy contradicted her with a groan, "They connect! For one breif moment, passage is allowed between the two. Then you disturb the water, and the two bubbles separate again. Well, more or less. Got it now?"

Cordelia shook her head again and laid her forehead on her knees, curling up against the arm of the sofa miserably. "No."

With another frustrated sigh, Rivvy turned to her boyfriend for help.

"Allen," she said, "You used to teach, didn't you? You try and explain it. I'm run dry."

Allen Doyle gave a small look of 'Why me?' and then turned to Cordelia.

"You know how, when you make a choice, there's always a chance that you could have chosen differently?"

"Yeah..." Cordelia nodded thoughtfully.

"Well," Allen said, "Those might've-beens, if you will, don't just go away. It's not so much different universes as different...possibilities, I guess. Like if you drank decaf this morning instead of coffee, and went to work half asleep, and missed a life-changing call because you were crashed out on your desk? There's another possibility – What if you had answered that phone call?"

"Oh, yeah!" Cordelia's brown eyes widened with realization, "Now I get it! Sort of like .. if you never met Angel! Then you wouldn't have gotten the job, you wouldn't have met me, and you wouldn't have...well, a lot of things would be different, I guess." Cordelia suddenly switched from excitement at her revelation to gloom at something else entirely. Allen began to wonder if maybe she wasn't telling him and Riv everything that his doppelganger had said and done, which was kind of creepy in itself.

After a moment of uncertain silence, Reveille stood and smiled broadly. "Well, then, now that you understand this theory of ours, we can get to work!"

"'Ours'?" Cordelia asked, "Do we have a theory?"

"Well, nothing that would have missed the original Einstein-er," Rivvy shrugged indifferently, "In my line of work, we've actually proven that these universes do exist. Or realities, rather. 'Universes' is a bit extreme."

"Or, you mean, different dimensions?" Cordelia asked, remembering the alien woman who had come into Earth's vicinity from a different dimension via an inter-dimensional portal.

"Heck, no!" Rivvy looked practically horrified at the thought. Energized, she leaped to her feet and began pacing across the living room floor, her mouth rambling at ninety miles a minute. "How the hell could a human possibly survive in a totally different dimension!? That would be like walking on a beach in hyperspace! It would be nuts! We humans can only exist in this dimension, the physical dimension, and this dimension alone. Now, I ain't saying there ain't no similar dimensions, per se, but even then there'd be some definite issues involved, which is why even if we did manage to leave this planet, humans would have to take some kind of drug to keep them thriving without the natural gravity and sunlight they grew up in, especially the females."

"Does she always ramble like this?" Cordelia whispered to Allen, whose eyes had begun to sort of glaze over.

"A bit, yeah," he replied, coming back into real-space as Rivvy stopped, noticing the bewildered faces of her fellow humans, "Especially when she just got her coffee."

"Sorry," she said, sheepishly sitting back down on the futon, "Caffeine did it to me."

"I know," Allen smiled back encouragingly, "I could tell."

"Oh, could ya now?" Rivvy remarked dryly, taking another sip of that glorious elixir called coffee, "Can't live with the stuff, can't live without it. All I can say is dammit to hell and damn me too. Now I'm sounding Goth..."

"Way too much coffee," Allen agreed. Cordelia just rolled her eyes and wondered what could've possessed Doyle to get a coffee-guzzling, redneck mad scientist of a girlfriend.


	3. Chapter 3

Part Three

Total Strangers

Angel woke up first, quickly sitting up and looking about to get his bearings. The first thing that came to his mind was, 'I'm certainly not in Kansas anymore.'

He and Wesley were lying on the dusty concrete porch of a run-down wooden shack. The rest of the street was riddled with such low-profile houses, most of them with duct-taped windows or barred screen doors. Obviously, the two men had entered an area of town that wasn't very popular, especially during night hours. The house they sat before was painted a dull, peeling buff yellow, and smeared with grimy splotches of dirt and mud. A broken-necked broom lay against the wall, riddled with ancient dust bunnies. Angel grimaced in disgust when he placed his hand on the dead carcass of a cockroach by accident.

Looking over at his coworker, Angel was relieved to see that his friend was okay. True, he did seem a little out of it, but...wait. Why wasn't he breathing?

Hurrying beside Wesley, Angel immediately began to perform CPR, until finally the former Watcher began to breath again. Cursing himself for forgetting that he, being dead, didn't have to worry about breathing like his friends did, Angel looked in concern at his friend, then did some thinking. They needed to get inside. Judging by the bars and duct-tape on the windows and doors of this neighborhood, outside was the last place you wanted to be during the darker hours of the night. Standing, Angel knocked on the door of the house to which the cemented, rail-less porch belong to.

The person who answered the door looked extremely familiar.

"Cordelia?"

The young woman frowned slightly. "Angel? Wesley? What are you doing here?" She wore a stained tank top and frayed, ratty blue jeans, and the vampire wondered why she wasn't in Los Angeles like she had been before the … thing … had sent them off to god-knows-where.

"You tell me," he replied, "Last thing I remember, we were in the office and then – "

"Office?" Cordelia asked in confusion, "What office?"

Angel frowned in confusion. "Angel Investigations," he answered carefully. If this was a joke, it wasn't funny. An if Cordelia and Wesley had gotten amnesia from the sudden travel, then this was going to be a worse episode than he thought.

"You named an investigative service after yourself?" Cordelia rolled her eyes in disdain, "How conceited."

"Look," Angel said, "Can we come in? I need to get Wesley inside in case something else goes wrong."

"Oh..." Cordelia frowned thoughtfully, then said, "Yeah sure. Come on in."

With that, she turned, giving the door a push that would have closed it if Angel hadn't put his foot out and stopped it. Pushing it open again, he got Wesley inside and gave the door a mule-kick to shut it behind him.

"Do you even have a sofa or anything?" Angel asked doubtfully.

"Yeah," Cordelia replied, "It's right in here."

Angel entered the tiny living room and looked in dismay at the dust-covered, broken couch that Cordelia had pointed to. Making due with what he'd got, Angel put Wesley on the sagging furniture, and quickly rolled him off when he noticed a heard of lice jump in surprise at the sudden new weight. Wesley gave a small grunt of surprise as his face hit the floor.

"Ow!" He sat up slowly, "What the...Cordelia?"

The British ex-Watcher looked in horrified amazement at the slutty, unkempt version of his coworker and friend. Angel nodded in confirmation.

"Yup."

Cordelia frowned slightly before asking the guys, "Can I get you anything?"

"Um..." Angel looked at Wesley, who shrugged indifferently. "Coffee, maybe?"

"It's in the cabinet to your left, above the kitchen sink. Coffee maker's right there beneath it," Cordelia instructed the vampire, who nodded and left to start the coffee.

The kitchen looked even worse. The single counter was cluttered with all sorts of foods, mostly fruits like apples and pears, all covered with nasty mold and grime. The sink was even worse, the metal all corroded and covered in slimy green specks.

Angel shuddered inwardly and opened up the described cabinet and pulled out the tin can of coffee. Setting it down onto the bar, he opened it and looked down into it, only to jerk back in alarm as two, three, four cockroaches three inches long and gorged on the black caffeinated powder skittered out and sped across the counter in alarm, finally beating a hasty retreat into the towel drawer. Angel shuddered, this time not even bothering to contain his disgust. He had rarely if ever seen a house this revoltingly run down in his entire life, or not-life.

Quickly changing his mind, he walked back into the living room, and paused as a very familiar scent caught the air.

A vampire.

As Angel hurried around the corner of the doorway leading to the living room, he was just in time to see Cordelia's face contort into a demonic echo of its original self and lunge toward Wesley.

Taking his speed in stride, Angel quickly caught her in the abdomen with a hurling crescent kick, making the vampire scream in anger and turn her attentions toward her former employer. Fangs bared, she hissed and went for Angel's throat, long nails ripping at the other vampire's unchanged face. The two creatures tumbled over each other, and Angel somehow managed to land on his feet and pack a solid punch or two combined with a nicely formed round-house kick to the female's knees. The dead Cordelia came back with a vengeance, throwing her entire weight against Angel's and sending both of them crashing through the rotted wooden door. Thinking faster than Angel, Cordelia snatched up the broken broomstick and tried to stab Angel with it. Angel quickly grabbed the broomstick, holding it at bay as Cordelia struggled to lower it into his heart as he lay with his back on the concrete.

"Who did this to you?" he asked curiously.

"Russell, back in L. A. Remember him?" she replied with an exhilarated, fanged grin, "He said I had potential."

With a swift motion, Angel drove his knee upward into the other vampire's gut, and used the opportunity to grab the broom head which still lay against the wall of the house, shoving it into his enemy's face. Cordelia recoiled in disgust, and Angel used that opportunity to grab the broomstick, turn it around, and drive it into the dead woman's chest. As what used to be Cordelia turned to dust, Angel got back onto his feet and hurried back into the house, despite his reasonable preference to staying outside of that germ-ridden hell-hold.

"Did she get you, Wesley?" He asked.

"No, thankfully," Wesley replied, "Is it just me or is something definitely wrong with this whole set-up?"

"No, something's definitely wrong," Angel agreed, "Cordelia told me that Russel changed her. Russel was a vampire in L.A., one I and Doyle saved her from. Somehow, that was changed and Russel actually did get her."

"Not to mention she had no knowledge of Angel Investigations, but she recognized us both," Wesley commented, "So that means she did meet us back in Sunnydale, but somehow she had no part in Angel Investi...uh oh."

Angel frowned in confusion. "What?"

"I think I'm dead."

Angel's brown eyes grew wide. "What!?"

"Well, think about it!" Wesley replied, "Without Cordelia's report about what happened when Faith kidnapped me, you wouldn't have gotten to that apartment in time, and..."

"And you'd be dead," Angel finished for him, "But who knows, maybe I still managed to find you."

"I doubt it," Wesley replied, "You wouldn't have known where to look. Anyway, since I'm still here and we can remember things differently, then we know that the time line hasn't been altered."

"Another dimension?" Angel suggested, then shook his head. "No, that just doesn't ring true. I've never heard of a dimension where all of our dimension's people are living – or not," he corrected himself quickly.

Just then a sudden thought occurred to him.

"What about Cordelia?" he asked Wesley, "She won't have a clue what's going on!"

"So, basically, this anomaly thing came around and sent me and the guys to a whole 'nother universe by accident?" Cordelia asked. She was snacking on popcorn and Rivvy had put on some good, loud country music, sung by classics like Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks, to keep them company while they and Allen theorized about Cordelia's predicament.

"Yup," Rivvy confirmed with a nod as she took another swig of root beer, "That's about the size of it, girlfriend. Although," She took on a more studious expression, "There is something odd about this whole deal. Something must've attracted it there. Anomalies don't just walk into office doors by accident."

"They don't?" Allen teased. Rivvy drank the last few drops of her root beer, crushed the can and sent it flying towards the demon hybrid, who simply deflected it with a raised forearm and tossed a fitful of popcorn at her.

"Bite you tongue," Rivvy replied, then allowed herself a girlish laugh as she slumped lower into the couch, "Now, what else was there, Cord? Any...oh, I dunno, anything out of the ordinary?"

"Unless you would term Wesley's coffee goof-off 'out of the ordinary', I'd say no," Cordelia answered her dryly.

Rivvy looked instantly curious. "What kind of goof-off?"

"As in 'naturally decaffeinated' goof-off," Cordelia replied, laughing at the other woman's horrified expression at the mention of that tabooed material.

"Well, what's in that to attract a whole damn inter-universal subspace anomaly?" Allen asked in confusion.

"More than you know," Rivvy said to him in a sagely tone, "There's more interstellar space junk in that decaffeinate coffee for you to choke a horse with."

"Seriously?" Cordelia asked with a disgusted grimace.

Rivvy took a deep, powerful breath and released it into a thoughtful, intelligent sigh at the ignorance of those who lacked the knowledge she bore which such great responsibility, her face filled with dead seriousness.

"More than you know."


	4. Chapter 4

Part Four

Three Weirdos, Indivisible...

"I wonder how Angel and Wesley are doing," Cordelia remarked to herself upon waking the next day after spending the whole night being introduced to Monty Python's Flying Circus by a crazy redneck woman. Getting up and walking into the kitchen, she followed the scent of freshly processed coffee and guessed that Reveille had just made it.

Much to her surprise, Reveille wasn't there. Instead, the person holding the coffee mug turned out to be Doyle – or rather, this universe's Doyle.

"Oh...Hi," She said uneasily. She still didn't feel comfortable around the other Doyle. All she could think about was the Doyle that had died and given her his visions.

"Hi," Allen replied, "Want some coffee? The mugs are in that cabinet over there," he gestured.

"Yeah thanks," Cordelia told him, going to open up the small cabinet. There were four mugs left: One was a plain black one, one was maroon-colored and bore the legend **A****T****M**, one was white with a picture of a glorious, rearing palomino stallion, and the last one bore a picture of a serial killer's note that said, "HAND OVER THE COFFEE AND NOONE GETS HURT". Selecting that one, Cordelia went to pour herself some coffee. As she fixed it, she asked, "So where's Reveille?"

"She left for work early this morning," Allen replied, silently pointing out where the sugar was, in answer to Cordelia's silent wondering as to where it was. As the California girl opened the small container and took two spoonfuls, Allen continued, "She pulled a late shift night before last. That's why she got the day off yesterday."

"What does Reveille do, exactly?" Cordelia asked curiously, stirring in the powdered cream and then settling back into a chair at the kitchen table, across from Allen.

The half-demon paused for a moment, then said, "Um, I think she works at Cheyenne Mountain Base, just outside of town. Subspace Telemetry, and all that."

"Ah."

After a while of silence as both drank their coffee awkwardly without speaking to each other, Cordelia finally said, "Could I use your phone? I need to call up Angel and Wesley and see where they are."

"Yeah sure," Allen replied, "It's right on the counter."

Cordelia got up and quickly dialed out Angel's cell phone number. Upon getting a dead answer, she growled in frustration and dialed Wesley.

Wesley and Angel were planning on how they were to find Cordelia after having eagerly evacuated the rickety house when the Brit's cell phone suddenly began to ring. Grabbing it and answering it he said, "Hello?"

"Wesley?"

"Cordelia!" Angel looked up in interest as Wesley continued, "Where are you? Are you alright?"

"Yeah I'm fine, Wesley," Cordelia answered, "I'm in a house with a couple if people in Colorado Springs. Look, Wesley, I need to talk to Angel about something."

"Alright," Wesley replied, then handed the phone to Angel. "She wants to talk to you."

Taking the phone from his friend, Angel answered, "What is it, Cordelia?"

"It's about..." Cordelia trailed off, then started again, taking the cordless phone into the adjacent living room so Allen couldn't here her say, "It's about Doyle."

"Doyle!?" Angel asked, "What about him?"

Wesley had heard quite a bit about the man Angel had just mentioned. Wasn't he dead, though?

"Angel, he's alive," Cordelia replied, "I was just talking to him five minutes ago."

"Oh..." Angel trailed off a little bit. He should have been expecting this. "Look, Cordelia, that's not really our Doyle. That's – "

"Some other Doyle, yeah, I kind of figured that." Cordelia sounded a bit stressed, which was understandable. Doyle and her had been in the beginnings of a close relationship when he'd gotten killed while saving a hybrid group of demons called the Listers. "Where are you?"

"We're in a kind of rough part of town." Angel chose not to tell Cordelia about her vampire evil twin. "I don't know exactly where."

Wesley noticed a tattered phone book on an upside down bucket on the porch that said "Colorado Springs".

"Not far," he told Angel softly, and Angel relayed the information to Cordelia.

"We're somewhere in the slums outside Colorado Springs," Angel told her, "Ask them if they know where that is."

"I will," Cordelia replied, "Do you have a street name?"

"Um, Wesley?" Angel asked, "Street?"

Wesley leaned over the porch rail and looked down the street.

"Key Street."

"We're on Key Street," Angel told the girl on the other end of the line, "That means we're not oo far from Colorado Springs."

"Have you been in Colorado before, Angel?" Cordelia asked curiously.

"Yeah," Angel replied, "Back in the fifties. Where are you at?"

Cordelia went to the front door and looked outside. Unable to see the street sign, she stepped out onto the porch and read it.

"Fall Forest Lane."

"I know where that is," Angel replied, "We should be there within half an hour."

With that, Angel hung up the phone and turned to Wesley. "Come on. Lets get underground before I burn up."

Lt. Kepler sighed with complete ennui as she and and Sargent Herriman worked on the computerized DHD. She was probably the only one on base who could remember the man's name, which just went to prove the inevitable – the most important shoe nail often gets forgotten en lieu of the kingdom that wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for the lowly little horse shoe nail.

"Walter," she said, "I just put rerouted the EPS feed. Try dialing it now."

'It' was probably the biggest kept secret in the world. Standing at approximately twelve feet high, the enormous circular portal was often referred to as the Stargate, and was kept in an enormous room known officially as the 'embarkation room', though most of the SGC personnel had taken to just calling it the 'Gate room'. It was made up of three rings of an alien element called naquada, and seven red ruby-like chevrons surrounded the outside. Right now, Kepler and Herriman worked in a room adjacent to it, called the control room. It had a nice scenic wall-wide window that looked out on it, but could also close shut if anything went wrong.

The center ring, riddled with etching of the various constellations, began to spin as Walter Herriman started the dialing process. As the right symbol slid beneath the lower left chevron, Herriman called out, "Chevron one, encoded." The chevron opened, closed, and began to glow with an eerie, blood-red sheen.

As the same happened with the lower right chevron, Herriman called out, "Chevron two – "

"Encoded," Kepler finished for him. Her entire stance, leaning on the console before her with an elbow on the dash, just screamed boredom.

"Yeah," Walter gave a small laugh, "I know it isn't the best line I could come up with."

"Try..." Reveille though for a moment, then said, "'Chevron three, glowing'."

"Chevron Three," Herriman said through the microphone as the middle left chevron locked, "Glowing."

One of the guards down below in the Gate Room looked up in confusion at the new phrase. Reveille giggled. Girls just wanna have fun, as the sage once said. Or was it a rock star?

"Chevron Four," she said as the center right chevron began to glow, "Is working."

"Hey!" said the guard, "What the hell is the matter with you guys?"

Both of the soldiers in the control room laughed at that one.

"Chevron Five," Herriman said as the upper left chevron found it symbol and closed on it, "Closed."

"Ooh, good one!" Reveille laughed, "My turn...Chevron Six," she said in a deep, British voice as the upper right chevron locked in place, "Engage."

Herriman laughed and, as the top chevron locked up and glowed, he said, "Chevron Seven – "

"Ka-woosh," Reveille finished for him. All seven chevrons glowed, and the bewildered guards down below continued to shout profanities at them.

Suddenly, one of the consoles sparked, and another exploded. Reveille let out a shriek of alarm and quickly ran for the fire extinguisher by the door, quickly putting out the fire as Herriman quickly shut down the Stargate to prevent more such accidents.

"Okay," said Reveille, slumping down into a black swivel chair with disappointment, "Not so 'ka-woosh."

After a moment' silence, Herriman asked, "Think we should try again?"

"You try again," Reveille told him, "I'm taking leave and going home for the day." Rebelliously, she pulled her ipod out of her jacket pocket and started playing Callin' Baton Rouge, singing along cheerfully, "Come on,now, put me on through, gotta send my love down to Baton Rouge, yeah, come on boy, put her on the line, gotta talk to the girl just a-one more time, oh, Baton Rouge!"

Herriman had the good sense to laugh softly as the plucky young scientist got up out of the chair. He'd heard stories of her and her half-alien boyfriend, but he'd never believed them. Word had it he was some Irish guy who could turn into a spiny cactus alien at will. Reveille constantly denied these rumors and Herriman never doubted her sincerity. Rev was just that kind of a girl.

Allen was bored stiff, introducing Cordelia to the show his girlfriend hated, 'Wormhole X-Treme', when someone knocked on the door. Allen frowned curiously – Rev wouldn't be home until about ten o'clock. Going to answer the door, he quickly tried to remember who could be calling now, of all days and times. He was just beginning to remember that Cordelia had done a lot of talking about location to some friends of hers over the phone when he opened the door to come face to face with a tall, scrawny myopic whose appearance just screamed British.

"Hello?"

"Uh, yes, is Cordelia here?" asked the stranger.

"Cordelia's right here," the California girl piped up behind the demon hybrid, "Hey Wesley! Where's Angel?"

Allen looked from the stranger to Cordelia, then back at the stranger, then back to Cordelia. "You invited him over and you didn't tell me?"

Cordelia's brown eyes went wide with embarrassment. "Oops! I'm sorry, D – uh, Allen!"

Allen rolled his eyes wearily and turned back to 'Wesley'.

"Might as well come in," he offered, then stepped aside so the man could enter.

"I'm sorry about Cordelia's forgetfulness," he offered, "My name is Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, and I'm a coworker of hers."

"Oh," Allen replied, still feeling a bit manipulated, "That's nice, I guess...coffee?"

Wesley's gray eyes brightened so quickly Allen almost thought they would glow like the green aliens on Wormhole X-Treme (The show Reveille hated to watch).

"Yes, please!"

Allen smiled, now in his element. When around coffee, Allen was always at his best, as Rev had once noted. He poured the Brit a cup of the elixir, and as all three sat down in the living room, Cordelia asked again, "So where's Angel?"

"He's in the underground areas," Wesley replied, "Hiding out until sunset."

"Hiding out?" Allen echoed in a question, "Why would he do that?"

Cordelia and Wesley exchanged significant glances and Wesley replied, "He sun burns easily."

"Oh..." Allen was still confused. Why couldn't the man just use sun screen or something? This Angel character was beginning to seem more and more suspicious by the second. Had he really, seriously worked for this man? True, he understood that there were such things as aliens – heck, he was half of one himself – but was there honestly an alien who couldn't stand the sunlight?

Allen Doyle suddenly couldn't wait for Rev to get back home and clear this thing up before it drove him crazy.

Sure enough, after six hours of an awkward game of ask-and-avoid-the-question, Lieutenant Reveille Kepler came through the door, beaming, red hair tussled by her good spirits, singing to herself, "Hey, honey, I'm home and I had a bad day..."

"Well let's hope that isn't so," Allen remarked, having hurried to greet the woman. Reveille smiled even broader at the sight of her half-alien boyfriend.

"Well, you know what to do..." she teased, throwing her arms arms around him in a cheerful embrace, then looking him in the eye with a desperate expression and said, "Gimme a beer!"

"Sounds about right," Allen agreed with a laugh, "But I don't think you want to get drunk in front of company."

"Company?" Reveille frowned curiously and left Allen to go into the living room, letting out a loud, melodramatic groan at the sight of Wesley.

"Aw, what the hell are _you_ doing here?" She asked miserably, sitting down and slumping into the pillows and blankets on the futon.

"I came to see Cordelia," Wesley replied uncomfortably. Poor guy, to be up on the spotlight against Reveille...Allen pitied the poor guy.

There was a moment of silence, only to be followed by a glum, "Oh."

Wesley never looked more put-on-the-spot, except for maybe when Angel had nearly died (again) from a single taste of the coffee from the morning before they'd come to this "possibility".

"Well," said Revvy, shrugging and moving into the kitchen, "Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. Any body else I should be expecting before I turn in?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

**Vampire In The House**

"A _what_!?"

"A...well, a vampire," Wesley repeated with a shrug. Reveille looked at him as though she thought he belonged in an insane asylum.

"...Very funny, Pryce," she told him, "Now what's the science behind it?"

"No science," Wesley replied, "Just plain fact. It's almost sundown now, so he will be able to come over quite soon."

"Uh-uh," Revvy disbanded, "Uh-uh! Ain't no freaky fang-face coming into my house. How the heck do I know it ain't bite my neck off to spite my face the second it walks through that door?!" She gestured toward the quiet front door in emphasis.

"Look," said Cordelia with a sigh, "We've been working with him for almost a year now. Do we look vampy to you?"

Reveille was silent for a moment, then admitted, "Noooo..."

"So how do you figure Angel's going to snap your jugular now, if he hasn't done ours, even when he had every chance to?"

Reveille slowly began to see the reason in Cordelia's statement. "Okay, I...I guess," she finally relented, "But you'll pardon me if I keep my gun belt on while he's around."

"No problem," Cordelia beamed, "Bullets can't hurt him anyway."

Revvy made a face at the Californian as the door bell rang in the entry-way, and got up, moving over to answer the door.

"Yeah – oh, hello," Revvy greeted the handsome vampire who stood before the door with less than her usual enthusiasm, "You're, uh, Angel, right?"

"Yeah, that's me," the vampire replied.

"M'kay," Revvy accepted skeptically, "C'mon in."

"Thank you." Angel moved in past his red-headed hostess and stepped into the living room, giving a sort of odd look in Allen's direction before recovering and saying, "Hi, I'm Angel," as though they had never met before.

"Allen Doyle," the Irishman introduced himself in turn, shaking hands with the vampire, albeit a little uneasily now that he knew what kind of creature he was, "Have a seat."

Angel nodded his appreciation and sat down on the sofa next to Cordelia. "I suppose my coworkers have filled you in on our problem?" he asked, always being one to get straight onto business.

"Yup," said Revielle, coming into the living room with the much-sought-after Miller Lite, "You're a vampire. You're also someone who hasn't had a decent cup of coffee in at least a day. And all of you," she smiled conclusively, "Belong somewhere else. Like another possibility or something."

Angel nodded. "That about sums it up, yeah," he replied.

"Well, no doubt, Cordelia's told you all about my profession," Reveille answered him, "I'm a theoretical astrophysicist, all hail, and I think that with a little thought and a cup of coffee, I can help you out of two of of your big three."

Angel smiled at Reveille's cocky response. She reminded him of Buffy Summers...just a little.

"Thanks," he told her.

"Psh, don't thank me," Reveille admonished dismissively with a wave of her hand, "Coffee's in the kitchen."

* * *

Five minutes later, Angel found himself relaxing in the arms of a tan leather sofa, a horse-iconic mug setting on his knee, full of blissful, steaming coffee. Cordelia , on the futon, had a cup too, with the air of one who was preparing herself for some great trial. Wesley was content to sit beside Cordelia, sipping on a cup of Jasmine Tea that Reveille had fixed up for the evening so she could relax. Allen sat on the other end of the sofa, coffee mug hovering beneath his face, happy just to catch the intoxicating scent as he listened to the animated scientific banter going on between Angel and Reveille.

"We have to figure out what that light was," Reveille insisted quite firmly, "I've got a gut feeling that that's at the heart of the matter."

"It could've been some kid with a flashlight," Angel replied, "Or a trick of the light, or a car going by. We don't even know if that's why we're here or not."

"Well, y'all sure as hell didn't make the jump by yourselves, now, didja?" Reveille challenged him. As Angel shook his head no, she continued, "That's what I thought. So if y'all didn't trigger the jump, then who did?"

Silence.

"Thank you. I think the light may have been some kind of life form that triggered it, or a temporal/spacial wave that caused a ripple in the space/time continuum, thus creating something of a rift for y'all to get swept into."

"And you believe all this stuff?" Angel queried incredulously, "Aliens from outer space, technospecies bent on galactic domination, spacial rifts that drop people into an alternate reality?"

"You bet your boots I do," Revvy replied firmly.

"And you, a self-proclaimed scientist," Allen scoffed, smirking pleasently.

"Hoosh it," Revvy ordered, giving him a playful nudge in the shoulder, "I'm talking business here."

"Ah, business," Allen nodded sagely, "Must be very, _very_, serious."

Revvy gave him an exasperated look and turned toward Angel, hands on hips.

"Please forgive my soon-to-be-late boyfriend," she requested primly, "He sometimes says stupid things...like when he's awake, for instance."

Allen mimed being shot to the heart.

Angel grinned at the playful banter between the two lovers. "Oh, I understand," he told her reassuringly, "Nobody can pick on you like a room mate."

"Puh, that's putting it lightly," Reveille snorted indignantly, "Now, it's about 2:30 AM. I's going to bed. Y'all make yourselves comfortable on the sofa, and Angel, you do...whatever you do. I got to work tomorrow, bright and early."

After a chorus of "g'night"s and "See you"s, Reveille turned around, grabbed Allen by the wrist, and dragged him off to the bedroom.

"Did you have to make such a fuss out there?" she demanded, a bit mournfully.

Allen shrugged. "I had some quip ideas. What's wrong with putting them to use?"

"Nothing, honey," Revvy replied with a smile and kissed him, "Love you."

* * *

The next day, Reveille woke up and got out of bed silently, heading toward the closet and getting dressed for the day. Pulling on her canvas green jeans, black t-shirt, and monogrammed jacket, Revvy grabbed her brown, scuffed work boots and socks and left the bedroom to go put them on, giving her sleeping boyfriend a brief wake-up kiss as she stopped to grab her gun belt from the nightstand.

"Morning already?" Allen asked, opening his brown eyes grudgingly.

"Mm-hm," his girlfriend answered, "Reveille's a-playing, time to get up."

"Ugh..." Allen muttered, sitting up as Reveille turned to leave the room, "Don't wake up the vampire-team yet, okay?"

"Wouldn't dare," Revvy replied reassuringly, "Meet you in the kitchen."

In the kitchen, the air was suitably chilly, even inside smelling crisp and fresh, the promise of a brand new day shining on the horizon – which sadly happened to be a neighbor's roof top. Lt. Kepler missed the old sunrise, the one that ascended into the air as slowly as ever it could, the fiery morning colors emblazoned like a ruined painting across a dusky, dawning sky. But you couldn't find that in the suburbs – only in the country of East Texas, where Reveille had been born and raised.

As she slid on her second boot and stooped over in her chair to fasten the shoe string, her boyfriend Allen came walking into the kitchen, fully dressed now and making a beeline for the coffee pot. While not as addicted as his military girlfriend, Allen still enjoyed his taste of elixir every morning, just as nature intended it to be.

"Hey, pour me a cup too, will ya?" the young woman asked, standing to buckle on her gun belt. Wordlessly, Allen moved to do so, and Kepler gratefully took it and quaffed it in three huge gulps. Giving her boyfriend a quick kiss, the young soldier called "Bye, honey!" over her shoulder and was gone. Allen watched her pull out of the driveway, head on down the road and drive out of sight, and then sat down at the kitchen table by himself, savoring the few moments of silence before Angel, Cordellia and Wesley woke up to shake the house up another day.

Cordelia woke up at about the same time as Wesley, who got up and stumbled into the kitchen for coffee. Cordelia followed, giving a meek, "G' Morning" to Allen Doyle, who pointed out the coffee cabinet for Wesley and went on to fix breakfast, which consisted of a simple course of fried eggs, all of them but Cordelia's nice and runny.

After a wordless breakfast, Doyle, Wesley and Cordelia all headed into the livingroom, where Angel was still lying asleep on the sofa, his tall, muscular form taking up the entire space. Doyle stopped where he stood and glared critically at the Sleeping Beauty, and then, exchanging a mischevious look with Cordelia, sat on him, turning on his girlfriend's radio, which happened to be playing an energetic song called "Razel".

Angel grunted in displeasure and tried to roll over, but found that he couldn't. Squirming uncomfortably, trying to vault the half-demon off of him, the vampire was loath to hear Cordelia's cheerful laughter mixing with Wesley's polite chuckle.

"Get up, punk," Allen ordered the inhuman house guest with a grin, "This is my sofa."

"Geddoffame, Doyle!" Angel grumbled incoherently.

"Sorry?"

"I said, GET OFF OF ME!!!"

"Hmm..." Doyle feigned thought for a moment, "No."

With a sudden grunt of effort, Angel arched his back, causing the Irishman to lose his seating, and as Doyle toppled to the floor, Angel yanked a blanket from atop the sofa, pulled it over his head, and clapped an arm cushion on top of that.

"Gosh," Allen remarked dryly, getting back up from the laminate floor, "He's such a beauty in the mornings."

For a moment, Cordelia caught herself remembering those wonderful days when her Doyle would do the same cantankerous tricks on Angel and her, a bright spot in both of his coworkers' lives. From sneaking Cordy's diet coke and making a face when he discovered it was diet to sitting on a sleeping angel and calling him "Punk", Allen was everything Doyle had been before...before the affair with the Listers.

"Cordelia?" Wesley asked softly, noticing her far-away look, "Is something wrong?"

Blinking back into the present day, Cordelia shook her head with a sad smile.

"No, Wesley," Cordelia replied, dodging as Angel pitched a sofa cushion at Allen, "Everything's almost just as it should be."

* * *

Reveille Kepler had just gotten back from exploring P3X-579 and was now getting cleaned up in the women's locker room. Her mind was still on the dillema going on in her household. Who did one get three people into another universe? How did one get them back? Reveille scowled with thought as she removed her dusty monogrammed jacket and proceeded to change her T-Shirt.

"Hey," said a woman about ten years older than her, clapping a hand on the leutenant's shoulder, "What's got you spooked?"

Reveille turned to face Major Samantha Carter, a respected, almost revered member of SG1, the first team to go through the stargate. Having the same hairstyle as Reveille's, only blonde, Carter's cheerful, mature features looked into Reveille's with friendly concern.

"Oh, nothing, sir," Kepler replied, pulling off her T-Shirt and getting another from her locker, "Just a little situation I thought up in my head. I can't get out of it."

"Oh?" Carter looked as though she were about to laugh, but kept the humor down to a curious smile, "Maybe I can help."

"Weeeell," Kepler said, thinking carefully, "My situation is this. Three people are switched into an alternate temporal possibility by thing or things unknown. One person, a girl, lands in a different spot from the two remaining guys. The girl knows someone in the new possibility that she ended up landing near, a man she was close to. The guys ran into somebody _they_ knew. One of the guys is an alien. Are you with me so far, sir?"

Carter nodded studiously. "Go on."

"So now, I've got to get them back into their possibility. How do I do this?"

The blond-haired, blue-eyed major looked at Lt. Kepler carefully. "Are you sure you're making this all up, lieutenant?"

"'Course she is," chimed in Kepler's team-mate Solika Tolberte from the showers, "Ol' Rev makes up stuff in her head all the time. Shoulda been a writer."

Carter looked with interest at Kepler's almost-embarassed expression.

"Have you thought about replicating the situation that got them into the new possibility?"

"Yes, sir," Kepler replied, "but there's something else. There was a bright light coming down the coridor just before the transfer. I think maybe it's a creature or something that was attracted to something in the room, maybe the decaf one of the three had fixd for the bunch."

Carter looked amazed, and respected, but a little worried for Kepler's sanity. "Where are you getting all this?"

"'Big John and Sparky', most likey," Solika chimed in while applying shampoo to her mid-length, nut-brown hair. Kepler blushed a bit at the radio-show reference – her friends constantly teased her, and BJ&S seemed to be a favortie subject for their amusment. Solika and Reveille had once even gone so far as to write a radio show routine called "Big Jack and Sparky", a play off of the gruff, yet charismatic leader of SG1, Colonel Jack O'Neill, and poor Lt. Siler, who had received the nickname "Sparky" from the former mentioned.

"Don't worry," Reveille sighed before leaving the locker room, "I'm sure it's all just a bunch of truck, anyway."


End file.
